Pastor Colin's Sermons

Here's the entirety of our Christmas Eve service. Merry Christmas!

This week, we look at a passage from 1 Timothy, which encourages us to not focus on wealth but on doing good.

When we're trying to get our heads around the Creation story, we have to look at a completely different creation story, from Babylon where the people were exiled. Take a listen to see a whole new side of the Creation stories in the Bible.

For the second and final installment of our series on Jude, we look at those affected by the "bad guys" in the letter. Some have fallen for their dangerous ideas. How should we deal with them?

Today, we start to take on the wacky and confusing book of Jude. Meaning, first of all, we have to try to figure out what the heck Jude is even about. Which is not that easy to do! Take a listen to see if you can make heads or tails of it!

This week, we look into Gehenna, a valley of fire and garbage and dead corpses, that just happened to be the inspiration for Early Christian view about Hell. So, learn more about that, as well as another way to think about Hell that might be more helpful nowadays.

Is there such a thing as Hell in the Old Testament? We look at Sheol, a murky, shadowy underworld; see how that's the Old Testament's remedy for evil; and explore how else we might conceptualize evil.

Today's sermon takes on a tough story to crack, and digs into the ins and outs of how a civil war was averted, people were terrified of being left out, and a hothead was able to keep it together to avoid a disaster.

Today's sermon looks at a bunch of different stories to try to figure out, How should Christians take care of the poor? Take a listen.

Today's story features the obscure story of Mephibosheth and King David. To make sense of it, we take a look at the Marshall Plan, years-long chases, and a tragic accident.

Today's sermon, the last in our sermon series on healing, looks at an odd story of a blind man being made to see. It involves spit, interrogations, screaming matches, and a Swedish teenager. Take a listen!

This week, we look at the question of Why doesn't God heal people anymore like in the Bible? Our journey takes us through the fields of anthropology and sociology to investigate healing around the world and our own Western culture's disenchantment.

This week, we dive into the passage of the Geresene Demoniac, looking at how the Roman Empire relates to the demon Legion.

For our first sermon in this series on healing, we will be thinking about the nature of prayer and what it means to be praying for something.

This week, we look at the famous story of the Ethiopian eunuch and dive more into the background of the story.

This week, we have the showdown to end all showdowns: Caesar vs. Jesus. Listen to learn how Luke is twisting Roman propaganda to get across his message of Christ's Lordship.

Today, Jesus takes on Herod. And in doing so, he gets us into thinking about the plight of refugees in our own world.

What does an ancient hymn have to do with Christmas? Quite a lot, it turns out. See how God coming in the form of a person is related to the theological concept of self-emptying, and why that might help our own relationships with others.

Today, we kick off our series "Christmas in July." By looking at these important stories at a different time than in December, we can see new features of them pop out at us, and enrich our understanding of the event of the Incarnation.

This week, we look at the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. Why were they out there for so long? What good did it do them? We dive into the psychology of slavery. the 10 Commandments, and more. Take a listen!

Who wants to try to make heads or tails of a super complex passage of Scripture? You do? Great! We take up Romans 11:1-33 and try to figure out what in tarnation Paul is saying about the Jews, of which he was one.

Today's sermon does deep into the story of a man named Marcion, who came up with a novel way to read the Old Testament that didn't go over too well. And then we see something 180-degrees different from Matthew, which was.

This week, we start to explore what we as Christians do with the Old Testament. And to start, we look at Acts 15 and the raucous council that debated whether or not Gentiles need to be circumcised.

Happy Easter! Reflect on a new facet of resurrection in our short sermon this week.

Finally, we reach a (somewhat) happy end to our series on Lamentations. We look at how the author is able to both hold the grief that they have experienced and the hope that God will be doing a new thing.

This week, we look at a quirk of the book of Lamentations: God is completely silent in the face of that devastation. Come dive into what might be going on here.

This week, to understand our reading, we have to take up two ideas, which help us to understand why exactly the book of Lamentations have such disturbing images of God.

This week, we dive deep into the backstory behind Lamentations. It's grim, but it helps to understand so much better what the book of Lamentations actually saying.

This Lent, we explore the book of Lamentations. What is lament? What might it have to tell us? But to start, what is Lent anyways? And why does Lamentations have something to say about it?

To round off our discussion of fascinating yet obscure women in the Bible, we're looking at the wife of a man called Manoah. She has her stuff together, in contrast to him, and we see that ultimately the angel of God takes her side. Take a listen!

This week, we look at "The Woman Caught in Adultery." What's really going on in this story? Is everything that is going on as it seems? Take a listen to find out!

We learn a lot from our Christmas pageants and carols, but what of what we know about the magi is actually true? Take a listen to find out! (Apologies for the hiccup in the recording partway through.)

This week, we're taking a look at the Magnificat, a poem from Mary before Jesus was born. And she has some interesting things to say about power and how God thinks about the poor and downtrodden...

We dive into this little known book of the Bible to try to figure out why we read this passage during Advent.

What does a terrorized ancient city have to do with our current political and social climate? Take a listen in this week's sermon!

This week, we finish our series Revelation for not-crazy people, and of course, we end on a high note. We take a look at this renewed Heaven and Earth, and an insanely large city, and what it looks like to live into this way of being.

This week's passage is both confusing and disturbing. It's the final battle scene where we see Jesus the warrior take on the forces of evil. How do we who recognize God as Love process this violent imagery? Dive in in our sermon this week!

This week is a doozy! We look at these mythical beasts in Revelation and how they stand in for the Roman Empire. And we try to puzzle out what we can get out of it that is relevant for our modern world.

This week, to understand our passage, we have to dive into economics, which helps us understand both Revelation and what God calls us to in our world today.

This week is a rough one... We try to grapple with one of the most developed women in the New Testament—but also one of the most problematic: "The Whore of Babylon." We'll try to understand just what John says about her, and how we process that in our modern world.

Revelation this week gets even weirder! We take a look at the strange symbolic world of "The Beast," which takes us deep into thinking about Empire and how we as Christians should deal with it.

This week we continue our sermon series "Revelation for Not-crazy People." And we dive into the letters from John to the churches. Take a listen to see what letters from 2,000 years ago might have to say about our current cultural moment!

Is it possible to read the book of Revelation without going off the deep end? We're going to be trying in this new series! This first week, we meet our narrator John and about the experience that sets up the whole rest of the book.

What do you do when the flaws in a Scripture passage threaten to overwhelm its insights? Is it possible to hold both of those at the same time?

In today's sermon, we discuss what Archbishop Desmond Tutu can teach us about First John's discussion of forgiveness.

Do we need to "just believe" or do the right thing? 1 John gives us a nice middle road between the two. Listen to the first sermon in our series investigating 1 John.

This week we dive into the arcane food purity laws of Leviticus, and find a surprising ancient version of animal rights values.

Let's dive into the craziness of Revelation 12: a fantastical story about a woman and a dragon that also has something worthwhile to teach us about ourselves and our world.

What does it mean to wrestle with God? Why is it a good thing? Genesis 32:23-32

Exodus 3:1-15

The very first episode of Pastor Colin's Sermons!